Hot Buttered Popcorn Bread

Freshly popped popcorn, freshly baked bread….the aromas emanating from my kitchen during this bread making session were out of this world!

The recipe is fairly standard; it’s an enriched dough made with bread flour, oil and sugar but with the added ingredient of popcorn "flour”, made from pulverized, popped corn. I made the popcorn the "old-fashioned” way “ on the stovetop in a pot with oil. Family questioned my sanity for doing this at 6am (though this same family enjoyed popcorn for breakfast, insisting it fit my criteria of being whole grain, low sugar, low fat and low sodium!!) but the bread was ready in time for lunch.

The crumb was soft and fluffy with little crunchy bits and though it didn’t taste strongly of popcorn, there was a hint of it. I omitted the optional butter extract so my loaf didn’t taste that buttery. I allowed the shaped dough to over proof slightly and the bread had huge (!!!) oven spring so the loaf fell slightly during cooling. An egg wash before baking and a basting with melted butter once it was out of the oven helped make this bread as "irresistible” as the author claimed.